For the network security vendor ratings survey, Infonetics asked
decision-makers at 22 incumbent, competitive, and wireless service
providers in EMEA, North America, Asia Pacific, and Central and Latin
America to name the vendors they use now and are evaluating for future
purchases, and to rate eight security vendors: Check Point, Cisco, IBM ISS,
Juniper, McAfee, SonicWall, TippingPoint, and WatchGuard.

"When it comes to security, service providers are not interested in
technology wars or theoretical possibilities; they just want to protect
their assets and their customers' assets. They're willing to deal with
small, focused vendors if those vendors build tailored solutions for them,
but for the most part they want to buy security solutions from large,
established companies. Carriers have a lot riding on successful
implementations of security, and they need a large neck to choke if
something goes wrong," explains Jeff Wilson, principal
analyst for security at Infonetics
Research.

In Infonetics' virtual security survey, network security managers from 109
large North American companies that have deployed virtual servers were
asked about server virtualization strategies, technologies, top vendors,
and drivers for purchasing security solutions for their virtual
environments.

Again, Jeff Wilson,
lead analyst for both reports: "The top drivers for investing in virtual
security are a mix of specific security issues, like providing a security
equivalent to non-virtualized infrastructure and preventing VM-specific
threats, and configuration/management issues like maintaining server
configurations and improving performance. Investing in virtualized security
solutions should absolutely improve the level of security in virtual
environments AND make them perform better."

MORE INFORMATION

To view the tables of contents and questionnaires Infonetics used to
interview service providers and enterprises for these reports, log in or
join the Infonetics service portal at http://www.infonetics.com/login. From
the portal, go to RESEARCH, then SECURITY.